Nobody Has Been Able to Solve the CIA’s Famous ‘Kryptos’ Sculpture. Soon, the Solution Will Be Sold to the Highest Bidder
Three of the four messages carved into the sculpture have been deciphered, but the final puzzle has left amateur sleuths stumped. In November, the solution could fetch up to $500,000 at auction
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More than three decades ago, artist Jim Sanborn created a mysterious sculpture for the CIA. Installed in 1990 in the courtyard of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Kryptos features a curving copper panel flanked by petrified wood. Sanborn carved 1,735 jumbled letters into the copper, leaving four coded messages.
Three of Kryptos’ messages have already been decoded, while the fourth, known as K4, remains undeciphered. But in November, on his 80th birthday, Sanborn plans to auction off Kryptos’ complete solution, and it’s estimated to sell for up to $500,000.
The unbroken code has “destroyed marriages,” brought “unwanted guests” to Sanborn’s door and even provoked threats on his life, he tells the Washington Post’s Kelsey Ables. “I could keel over at any minute, and I’d rest easier if I knew that things were in control somehow.”
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The four codes were a collaboration between Sanborn and Edward Scheidt, the former chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center. The men met “more or less in secret,” Sanborn told CNN’s Christine Champagne and Drew Beebe in 2020. “He educated me on the subject of code, modern codes, contemporary coding systems—at least contemporary in ’88.”
The three decoded messages share themes of secrecy and discovery, reported the New York Times’ John Schwartz and Jonathan Corum in 2020. The first message reads, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion,” with “illusion” purposefully misspelled. The second says, “Does Langley know about this? They should: It’s buried out there somewhere. X who knows the exact location? only WW.” (The initials refer to William Webster, the head of the CIA at the time.)
Fun fact: Kryptos’ nested riddles
The sculpture contains an additional riddle that can be solved after the four puzzles are deciphered.The third message, which also features deliberate spelling errors, is an adapted passage from Egyptologist Howard Carter’s account of discovering King Tut’s tomb. “Slowly, desparatly slowly, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed,” it begins. “With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner.”
In 2010, 2014 and 2020, Sanborn offered clues to sleuths trying to solve K4. Still, the message has remained unsolved, and it’s taken up an inordinate amount of the artist’s time. At home in the Chesapeake Bay, Sanborn fields so many messages containing guesses that he now requires a $50 submission fee. He tells the Washington Post, “There can be an addiction in some people.”
“Some see it as a battle of wits, some as a test for their software, some as a hobby that keeps them engaged with cryptology after their active career at the bleeding edge has come to an end,” says media studies scholar Peter Krapp, who studies cryptological history at the University of California, Irvine, to the Washington Post.
In November, RR Auction will sell the complete solution to Kryptos along with a signed letter from Scheidt, photographs and related materials. In a recent open letter, Sanborn writes that his decision to sell the solution was difficult but necessary: “I no longer have the physical, mental or financial resources to maintain the 97-character K4 code section of my sculpture and continue my other projects.”
Video game developer Elonka Dunin, who maintains a website dedicated to Kryptos, tells the Washington Post she would welcome a reveal of the K4 solution. “If the auction settles the mystery, I’ll be glad to set aside the constant stream of theories and focus on other creative work,” she says.
But Bobby Livingston, RR Auction’s executive vice president, tells Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred, “The ideal outcome would be for the winner to become a guardian of the secret, not its revealer.”
Sanborn agrees. He hopes that whoever buys the solution will maintain Kryptos’ mystery and keep people guessing. He writes in the open letter, “Power resides with a secret, not without it.”
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